Search Engine Selection

In K-Meleon, it is easy to use a wide array of search engines. It is a simple process to add new search engines and to set the default search engine.

Changing, Adding and Removing Search Engines

1. Go to Tools > Web Search > Configure... From the Finding Websites page, choose the second tab: Web Search. You can see the ten search engines used as default in drop-down lists. You can change any of them.

2. You can add a new one by clicking on Add Entry. This creates another drop-down menu, where you can chose a new search engine.

3. The first entry of each opened list is Remove This Entry. Choose this if you want to remove it. Whatever you add or remove, you can change back later.

Setting the Default Search Engine

4. Google is set as the default search engine. You can change this by going to Tools > Web Search and uncheck Use As Default Engine. As a result the default search engine will always be the one you used for the last time.

5. To make a search engine the deafult one regardless of which one you used earlier, first choose the engine you want to set as default. When the Search dialogue appears, you may press either OK or Cancel. The chosen search engine will be marked in the list. Check Use As Default Engine to make it remain the default one.

Keyword Autosearch

6. The "Keyword Autosearch" feature allows you to type a search query directly in the URL bar and search for it as long as it does not have a ".com", ".net", etc. in it.

7. In order to turn it on, go to Tools > Web Search > Configure... and on the Finding Websites page you will find a checkbox to mark. You can choose a search engine form the list below the checkbox.

Further customization

8. To further customize the search strings, you can select one of the search engines on the Search Engines page tab.

9. If you select one and choose Edit, you can change the details. Clicking Add, you can add a new one. On the Search Engines page, you can see many examples. You will not need to enter all the information for a search engine, but rather just a small portion. You will see something like this:

10. You will need to copy the part between the quotes. Go to Tools > Web Search > Configure... and Search Engines tab. Click on Add and and paste the part between the quotes into the URL section. Provide a name for the search in the Caption section.

11. Give it a try. Type something random like "random" or "cat with nine legs" or "ninety-four pickles" into the URL bar and you will see that after a few seconds of trying to resolve the search query as an address, it will skip along to your search engine and display the results for the search query of what you typed in the URL bar.

Note:

If you see the pattern in all of this, you could probably come up with your own URLs to use to do your own customized searches.

(This tutorial was originally written by Brian (bst82551). Later rewritten to match version 1.12.)